


a little vision of the start and the end

by afteriwake



Series: In So Few Words [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcoholic Harry, Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, John's Childhood, John-centric, POV John Watson, Poor John, Post-Reichenbach, References to Depression, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-08
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 05:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had always thought he’d be prepared to deal with someone like Sherlock. What he wasn’t prepared for was the loss of his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a little vision of the start and the end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aaronlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaronlisa/gifts).



> This is a birthday present for my best friend **aaronlisa** , who asked for a fic where it focused on John and him dealing with Sherlock’s eccentricities. I’m sorry if this is too angsty, hun; if it is I’ll write you something else, I promise. Title comes from “Breath Of Life” by Florence + the Machine.

He had vivid memories of living with his sister. They were close in age, and as such their parents thought it was best if they spent a lot of time together. When they were young it wasn’t so bad. He and Harriet had a lot on common, considering Harry was a tomboy at heart. They would get muddy, climb up the trees, terrorize the prissier girls down the block. He had fond memories of his childhood.

And then Harry began to change. He knew she was gay before he knew what the word meant; she had confided in him at the tender age of ten that she liked girls. He had just shrugged his shoulders and accepted it; after all, he was only eight and did it really matter if she liked girls? He thought all girls except Harry were gross anyway. But she told him to keep it a secret, that no one else should know. So for four years he kept it a secret.

When he was twelve and Harry was fourteen it all came out. Not from him; he didn’t blab secrets. Even at a young age he held onto secrets, kept them close. His, his sister’s his mother’s and father’s, his other friends…he was the reliable sort from birth, apparently, and trustworthy to boot. No, Harry herself told them, when one of the neighbor kids snitched that he’d seen Harry kissing Yvette Lynnwood down the street. Their parents had gone ballistic, Harry locked herself in her room for days and refused to come out, and he’d gone up to the snitch and broke his nose. That’s how they dealt with the news.

He watched Harry change, go from warm and open to cold and bitter. He saw her begin to drink, filching some whiskey or some scotch from their parent’s liquor cabinet which was _supposed_ to be locked. He watched the sister he’d always loved turn into a mean drunk, right before his eyes. It was almost with relief that she left at seventeen to try and make her own way in the world.

He’d thought dealing with all that, with a broken family and a drunk for a sister…he’d thought that would have prepared him for anything. And if that hadn’t, then the university crowd would have. He wasn’t a straight arrow, but he never let it get out of hand. He hung with the strange kids, the ones who would have been considered counter culture by his parents. But they got him. He never let his time with them interfere with his studies, because the idea of being a doctor had been his dream since he could remember his first doctor’s appointment, but he did learn to accept all kinds from them.

And if all that hadn’t been training, then the military service and the time in the war should have taught him lessons about dealing with anyone. It was a whole new world over in Afghanistan, a whole new culture to learn about and protect, to be welcoming to but wary of. Before his career-ending injuries he’d gotten to know all sorts of people, from his fellow British soldiers to the rowdy Americans, to the people he was trying to protect and the people who were helping to keep him alive.

All of that should have made dealing with Sherlock Holmes a snap, a walk in the park, but there were times Sherlock drove him up the wall, times he was convinced he had a tenuous grasp on sanity and if Sherlock did _one more thing_ it would surely snap in two and he’d go off perpetrating the kind of crimes that Sherlock excelled at solving. He wasn’t sure why he stayed on the worst days, but on the better days he knew: if he left one day, and maybe one day soon, Sherlock Holmes would self-destruct, and the world would lose a brilliant mind. But most of all, he would lose a good friend.

Someone had told him that maybe, if they were all lucky, one day Sherlock Holmes would become a good man. Maybe it had been Lestrade, maybe Mycroft; his memories of the first meetings with all of them had become a bit of a blur now, and the thoughts of Sherlock that filled his head, of his lifeless body on the pavement, of the last message left to him, the final note before his grand suicide…these things filled his head now. His grief was overwhelming, and his biggest regret that he hadn’t been able to keep Sherlock from self-destructing, the thought that the world had, indeed, lost a good man...it all came crashing down on him at a moment’s notice. He’d always wondered if there would be a day when Sherlock’s eccentricities would be the end of him; now he knew the loss of them would be his undoing.


End file.
